Larsblog - beer

The farmhouse survey showed that brewing in
Telemark was still alive in the 1950s, but for a long time I thought
it had died out. Then I found a video from the 1980s showing a
recreation of farmhouse brewing. And then, on Facebook, I found
something
called "Morgedal
susle og ølbryggarlag". In other words, Morgedal brewing
association. Their photos of steaming wood-fired kettles full of
juniper left no doubt: farmhouse brewing was still alive. So to learn
what was going on and how they were brewing I contacted them via
Facebook and invited myself to come and brew with them.
...

The series on yeast taxonomy now ends with a
post on the various species in the Saccharomyces family. If you don't
know what a genus is, or what, exactly, Saccharomyces is, read
the first post in the series. The family
contains two members most people know very well, and then a whole
series of lesser-known members.
...

The increasingly inaccurately named series
on yeast terminology continues with a post
diving into how, exactly, hops prevent bacteria from infecting beer. I
realize now I should have called it "the microbiology of beer," but
too late. Anyway, in essence, bacteria can't handle alpha acid, and
the IBU scale measures the amount of alpha acid in the beer, so higher
IBU = more bacterial resistance. It's the details of how this happens
that is interesting, however.
...

We continue the series on the family tree of
yeast with a post on bacteria. As I explained in the first post,
bacteria are very different from yeast, but they are still important
in beer. (Yes, I should have thought of a better title while I was
still doing part 1. Ah well.)
...

I
was asked to explain the family trees of yeast and since not much
has been written on this I figured I'd give it a go. Before we get to
the actual family tree, let's start by clearing up some terminology.
...

Danish farmhouse brewing appears to be almost entirely dead today,
but it was once thriving all over Denmark, and it died fairly
recently. Apart from one very brief summary hidden in a Danish dialect
dictionary I don't know of any attempt at a comprehensive description
of this brewing culture. So when I discovered that extensive
ethnographic surveys of Danish farmhouse brewing existed in two places
in Copenhagen I spent three days photographing 126 separate responses
in order to get a picture of Danish farmhouse ale.
...

The topic for the session #100 is
"resurrecting
lost beer styles". I decided to choose what is very likely the
biggest beer style you've never heard of: raw ale. It's not even a
single style, but a whole group of beer styles, all of which share one
characteristic: the wort is never boiled. Strictly speaking raw ale
neither dead nor lost, but it's still in need of a
ressurection. Because even though these beers are spread over a wide
area, and historically have been extremely important, hardly anyone
has ever heard of them.
...

Norway may not be the world's biggest country, but it has
considerable geographic variation. This is mainly due to two factors.
First, Norway is long and narrow, going roughly north-south. From the
northernmost point to the southernmost point is 1700km, or roughly the
distance from Manchester to Rome. The climate is fairly northern
already in the southern part of Norway, and you can imagine what it's
like 1700km further north.
...

During my last trip to Lithuania I met
Simonas Gutautas, who works for the Dundulis brewery. Dundulis is a
unique brewery in Lithuania in the sense that they straddle the divide
between the world of modern craft brewing and the old, traditional
farmhouse brewing. They are also very good at promotion and run
several bars in Vilnius and other Lithuanian cities. In a way they are
similar to Malduguns of Latvia or Põhjala of
Estonia, except that they have a real connection with the farmhouse
culture.
...

I got hold of a bottle of raw ale from Hornindal via contacts. I'd
been warned earlier that kveik from Hornindal had gone bad, and made
sour beer. And by this time I'd already had the brewer's kveik
analyzed, and been told that it contained bacteria. So despite
trudging a good distance across town and back again to get hold of the
bottle, my expectations were quite low when I opened it at a small
tasting at a friend's flat.
...